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America’s incarceration rate is in decline

theatlantic.com

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Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#241

Post by wredcoll »

999900000999 wrote: post #150
pamelafox wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had my children at 36 and 38, and I'm the mother, and energy-wise, I've had no issues. Yes, they considered me to be of "advanced maternal age" in the OB department and gave me special treatment due to it, but my doctors told me that the "advanced maternal age" threshold (35) was based off outdated research anyway. In the bay area, most of the mothers I've met were around that age, and my friends are having their k…

The issue here is this can lead people to pushing it till 40+. I was talking to a nice girl up until she mentioned still wanting kids in her late 40s. Maybe I’m old school, but telling someone you froze your eggs the same day you meet them is weird. Society itself is broken. You SHOULD be able to graduate high school and make enough to support yourself and a family with a bit of struggle. This rapidly transformed int…

> Society itself is broken. You SHOULD be able to graduate high school and make enough to support yourself and a family with a bit of struggle

This has literally only been true for about 30 years out of the sum total of human history, would you like to guess when those 30 years happened to be?

Obviously the answer is "1950s america".

For the rest of human history, you needed something beyond the education you received until the age of 18 in order to support a family.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#243

Post by b112 »

EGreg wrote: post #237
b112 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too far is an understatement. People keep poking at the wrong reasons, but in some societies it is quite dire. South Korea with this year of 1, when 2.1 means 'static', means more than halving the population every 30 years or so. For a reverse comparison, if you take a penny and double it every day, you end up with > $5M in 30 days. And yet this birthrate issue doesn't take into account plague, war, natural disasters…

Throughout most of human history we have had less than a billion people. More people are alive today than have ever lived. And you are concerned that the population will drop by a half? Everyone will be richer and better off. The amount of pollution and resource use will be solved too. The underlying input to that is the number of people. One third of arable land is undergoing desertification Insects and other specie…

And you are concerned that the population will drop by a half?

If you read more carefully, I am concerned by two things. A reduction to 0, and the lack of control over this. I think you don't get how the rate is continuing to decline, and further, that knowing why is important.

And I have not said we need "more humans". Instead, I said we need a base number of humans.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#244

Post by TiredOfLife »

rawgabbit wrote: post #16

This is good news. The level of crime and number of offenders has decreased. Quotes from the article: > As of 2016—the most recent year for which data are available—the average man in state prison had been arrested nine times, was currently incarcerated for his sixth time, and was serving a 16-year sentence. > But starting in the late 1960s, a multidecade crime wave swelled in America, and an unprecedented number of…

Crime is still happening. The arrests are just not being made. There is a readon why us stores have more and more stuff behind locks.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#245

Post by chrisbrandow »

ericmcer wrote: post #127
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's lead. Lead concentration in America "rapidly increased in the 1950s and then declined in the 1980s" [1]. There is a non-linear discontinuity among kids born in the mid 80s, with linear improvements through to those born in the late 2000s [2]. Arrest rates for violent crimes are highest from 15 to 29 years old (particularly 17 to 23-year olds) [3]. They're particularly low for adults after 50 years old. We're aro…

It is insane to just confidently assert that the only factor in the decrease in crime is Lead. Treating an insanely nuanced issue as an absolute doesn't make your argument more compelling, it is actually kind of baffling.

There have been a lot of studies that show the correlation with lead up and down and varied by lead in different cities countries with different phaseout timelines.

Kevin drum and Rick Bevin both did a ton to lay this out systematically.

As leaving drum has noted, Lead is NOT the only contributor to crime, but it was the cause of the largest variations for most of the 20th century.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#246

Post by dmix »

kragen wrote: post #233
dmix wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So reducing lead exposure immediately changes your brain to do less crime?

No, there's an offset of about 18 years, if I remember correctly?

I see, so since a large majority of crime is done by young people, peaking between 15-25, they are basically comparing a whole new generation of kids who didn't have developmental brain issues vs their elders.

Were the older people who grew up with lead exposure also experiencing higher rates of impulsive crime in the late >1990s relative to the new and prior generations? That would help eliminate the major differences in economics/culture/politics of their upbringing (for ex: mass flight of families moving to the suburbs to raise their young kids after the 1970s crime wave scared them away).

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#247

Post by b112 »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #238
b112 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too far is an understatement. People keep poking at the wrong reasons, but in some societies it is quite dire. South Korea with this year of 1, when 2.1 means 'static', means more than halving the population every 30 years or so. For a reverse comparison, if you take a penny and double it every day, you end up with > $5M in 30 days. And yet this birthrate issue doesn't take into account plague, war, natural disasters…

The entire point of having human intelligence is being able to ignore or overthink or delay or prevent any primal urges. We also have urges to kill and rake and destroy but I doubt you’re going “laws are bad because they prevent out primal urges”. Also appeals to evolution are extremely weak and lazy and unproven.

Urges to kill and rake and destroy? The first, yes. The second, lack of care by some.

Yet the first is aggression often born from, again, reproductive drive. You don't see moose smashing the horns together for fun, they do it to exhibit dominance. All creatures strive to say "I'm the best!", in hundreds of subtle and overt ways. "Success" at any act means "I'm a better mate!".

All of human culture, all of human drive, all of our existence is laced, entwined, and coupled with this drive. You may think your fancy pants brain is the ruler of all, but it's not, for the very way you think, is predicated by an enormous amount of physiological drives, the primary being "reproduce".

Saying that "citing concepts from entire branch of science" is weak, is a very weird thing to do.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#248

Post by wizee »

wredcoll wrote: post #241
999900000999 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue here is this can lead people to pushing it till 40+. I was talking to a nice girl up until she mentioned still wanting kids in her late 40s. Maybe I’m old school, but telling someone you froze your eggs the same day you meet them is weird. Society itself is broken. You SHOULD be able to graduate high school and make enough to support yourself and a family with a bit of struggle. This rapidly transformed int…

> Society itself is broken. You SHOULD be able to graduate high school and make enough to support yourself and a family with a bit of struggle This has literally only been true for about 30 years out of the sum total of human history, would you like to guess when those 30 years happened to be? Obviously the answer is "1950s america". For the rest of human history, you needed something beyond the education you receive…

People supported families with single incomes with less than high school education for centuries before the 1950s.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#249

Post by fulafel »

dcow wrote: post #219
strict9 wrote: post #12

> Rapidly declining numbers of youth are committing crimes, getting arrested, and being incarcerated. This matters because young offenders are the raw material that feeds the prison system: As one generation ages out, another takes its place on the same horrid journey. Another factor which will soon impact this, if it isn't already, is the rapidly changing nature of youth. Fertility rates have been dropping since 200…

We may have swung the pendulum a little too far towards deliberate, though. The birthrate right now is below replacement rate, meaning that if we keep going like this (even if the birthrate doesn't keep trending down and holds steady) that society will die off. We need to figure out how to build an economy and society that can facilitate deliberate responsible parentage younger and more often. Luckily we have generat…

Not too far at all considering the level of overpopulation and resulting environmental crisis we're in.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#250

Post by defrost »

wredcoll wrote: post #241
999900000999 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue here is this can lead people to pushing it till 40+. I was talking to a nice girl up until she mentioned still wanting kids in her late 40s. Maybe I’m old school, but telling someone you froze your eggs the same day you meet them is weird. Society itself is broken. You SHOULD be able to graduate high school and make enough to support yourself and a family with a bit of struggle. This rapidly transformed int…

> Society itself is broken. You SHOULD be able to graduate high school and make enough to support yourself and a family with a bit of struggle This has literally only been true for about 30 years out of the sum total of human history, would you like to guess when those 30 years happened to be? Obviously the answer is "1950s america". For the rest of human history, you needed something beyond the education you receive…

You might want to brush up on your history.

Aside from the peer comment pointing out the bleedingly obvious, there's also a bit of history here:

  In 1907 Justice Henry Bourne Higgins, President of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court, set the first federally arbitrated wages standard in Australia.

  Using the Sunshine Harvester Factory as a test case, Justice Higgins took the pioneering approach of hearing evidence from not only male workers but also their wives to determine what was a fair and reasonable wage for a working man to support a family of five.

  Higgins’s ruling became the basis for setting Australia’s minimum wage standard for the next 70 years.
that you're clearly unaware of.

* https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/harvester-...

* https://www.fwc.gov.au/about-us/history/waltzing-matilda-and...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvester_case

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